The quick update for Usable Web Solutions, LLC is that I carried through on my plans to remove all of my third party clients and now the business operates as a shell corporation that owns several independent websites. While I enjoyed working with most of my clients most of the time, I began to run into issues where certain clients just wouldn’t pay for my services. In business, I live by a simple code – you pay a person/company what you promised to pay them, assuming that the good or service provided was of the expected quality. Simple. I never had a complaint about the very high standards that I set for my work; rather, the clients who stopped paying me ran into their own financial troubles and their financial troubles became my issue. Not good. As you might suspect, once those clients stopped paying regularly I cut them off and canceled those contracts.

Then I ran into several issues where clients began to think that since I was their website designer, then I was also their in-house technology person. They were wrong. Some folks just didn’t understand that the guy who makes your website isn’t the guy who is tasked with fixing your Microsoft Word when a document doesn’t open… particularly when the contract you signed with that website guy clearly states his responsibilities being tied solely to your website presence! Thankfully, I only had one or two of these clients over the years (each with several websites, come to think of it). Spinning them off to other web designers in the area was an easy decision when their contracts came due.

And then there was my favorite type of head-shaking client – the ones who knew almost nothing about technology, but they would boss me around demanding that complex activities (think highly sophisticated database building) take place in a matter of days. I had one client that demanded an integrated third party payment system be installed on their website by the end of the day. Granted, if they were using PayPal or Google Wallet that would have been an annoying, but rather easy task. But, as I’m sure you suspect by this point, they didn’t want to use the easy option. They wanted to use the most complex, obscure website payment system on the internet. What fun?! After I finished that job (it took a weekend to get it working correctly), I let that client know in advance of their contract expiring that I wasn’t going to renew it and they should find another company for their website services. Last I checked, their website still hadn’t been updated and I spun them off as a client some 3 or 4 years ago.

Sure, I had many great clients, but my aggravating ones easily won the day and forced me out of the third party website management business. It just wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Today, I keep Usable Web Solutions, LLC open and I use it to manage and build my own suite of websites. You’re reading my personal blog site – JerseySmarts.com. In the coming weeks, I plan to release some new websites and reintroduce some of my old websites that I’ve retired over the years. None of these websites will have input or management-level requirements from anyone on the outside of Usable Web Solutions, LLC (and as the guy who owns and operates that company, what I’m really saying here is that I’m going to manage the suite of websites myself). Having all of my websites managed under my own banner and operated by me and me alone should make the entire management process flow much easier.

That’s your quick update on Usable Web Solutions, LLC. It was my first small business and the first major success that I had as a business owner. Here’s hoping for many more similar successes in my future!

Don’t think that you need to be an academic or an ultra emotive person to discover these particular guides in your life. You can find this guiding wisdom all over the place – if you look. You can find deep philosophical guidance in the words that a coach speaks to a player, in the intangible lessons on character that a teacher gives to a student, or even in the advice your doctor gives you about general health.

Guidance that is typically not warped by moral relativism is widely available – if you just look for it.

For me, I’m guided by lessons from my family and my faith and, in many ways, by my educational experiences. Being guided by those lessons allows me to make decisions in my life that I’m very comfortable with and that ultimately lead me to a life of no regrets – without the stupid “you only live once” attitude that the moral relativists encourage.

Yet, sometimes I consider whether I might have made different decisions in life and thus the creation of this blog entry. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then these considerations certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise to you since they focus on my student loans, my health, my entrepreneurial exploits, and my education. You might consider the writing below the “lessons learned” from my experiences on these issues. I’m not sure if you’ll find this interesting, but here we go. Below are some of my personal thoughts about what I might have done differently if I had a magic time machine… or something!

Paying Back My Student Loans
My biggest financial accomplishment in the last 3 and a half years was repaying some $104 thousand of my $121 thousand in student loan debt. Today, I have enough money to repay the remaining $17 thousand, but since I’ll very likely be buying a home in the next few months I’ve opted not to give those funds to the government just yet. And that would be the first lesson learned in my ultra aggressive student loan repayment from the last 3 and a half years. Namely, I could have relaxed just a little bit with the repayment of my United States Department of Education Direct Loan to afford me a larger down payment for the home I’ll be purchasing. Along with maybe not being so aggressive in repaying my loans in the last year, if I could jump in a time machine I’d tell the 18, 19, 20, and 21 year old versions of myself to start repaying the loans while I was still in school. I was making decent money while I was in college. It would not have been a problem to make $300 – $500 payments each month while I was in school. That would have lowered the debt boom that I felt after I graduated from graduate school in 2006. Second lesson learned – begin repaying your student loans while you’re still a student, if you can… and you probably can.

Taking Out Student Loan Debt
This one goes hand-in-hand with the lesson learned above and is probably pretty obvious, but if I could jump into that time machine and go back to 1999 – 2003, I’d tell my younger self to not take out as much in student loan debt. Specifically, I would have dramatically reduced the amount of nonacademic student loan debt that I took out while I was both an undergraduate and graduate student. The job that I held the longest while I was a student was working for the landlord of the apartments that I lived in. When he initially offered me the job, he wanted to work a deal where I got paid a little bit less each week, but my rent would be free. I didn’t like the idea of losing money in my hand today but still working for it, so I took out additional student loan debt to make bulk rent payments twice each year. On average, I was paying about $600 per month in rent (it was a little bit less when I first started working there and a little bit more when I left). If you do the math, that’s $600 in rent each month multiplied by 12 months in the year equals $7,200 in rent each year… multiplied by the 3 or 4 years that I worked for the landlord equals… a lot of money that I didn’t have to take out in student loans. The lessons learned here is to take advantage of legitimate cost saving deals if they’re offered to you and try not to take out too much in living costs when you take out student loans.

Slowly Building Usable Web Solutions, LLC Instead of Attacking the Market
Switching of student loans and on to one of my entrepreneurial efforts – when I started Usable Web Solutions, LLC over 7 years ago, I took an aggressive approach to the local web development market in the northern shore area of Monmouth County. That aggressive approach paid off in the short-run with UWS generating nearly 50 clients in its first 2 years of operation. Let’s be honest – to generate nearly 50 clients in a company that I was really running part-time on the side without much effort is pretty damn impressive. One of my mistakes in building up those clients, though, was focusing on undercutting the existing web development and maintenance market. If a competitor was charging $3,000 to design a website, I’d charge $1,500. If they were charging $50 per month for maintenance and hosting, then I’d charge $30. Undercutting the market brought me clients, but it didn’t bring the tremendous amount of revenue that you would think comes along with that number of clients signing up in a short period of time. Also, I gave my nonprofit clients a discount, but I never actually marked that discount down in my official paperwork. That cost me quite a bit of money that I could have saved come tax season each year. The lessons learned here are to very carefully select the methods by which you attack a local market when starting a company and to be selective in the clients that you choose to work with in a start-up. Another lesson I learned was to do a little bit more research into the tax implications of discounts before offering them to your clients!

You Should Be Calling Me “Doctor” Right Now
The student loan and website stuff above and the other items you’ll read below are annoying. But the thing that really bites my ass is that I didn’t stay in school after I graduated from graduate school in 2006. Without question, I should have stayed in school and gotten my doctorate. Just to show you how close I was to getting one, the graduate program that I was in required 45 credits for a masters degree and 72 credits for a doctorate. You probably did the simple math and saw that I might have been 27 credits away from a doctorate – not correct. I graduated from the masters degree program with 54 credits, putting me 18 credits away from a doctorate. EIGHTEEN CREDITS. Want to know what’s worse? Since I graduated with masters degree, I’ve successfully completed a 15 credit graduate certificate program and I’m just about 6 credits into a post-masters certificate program. That’s 21 more credits on my academic resume… with no doctorate at the end because they were at a different academic institution than where I received the masters degree! You might think that the lesson learned here is to go back to my original graduate institution and finish the job and you’d be correct in a way. I’m not entirely sure that a doctorate in the same discipline that my masters degree is in is what I want to accomplish academically. Silly, right? The lesson learned here is that if you’re incredibly close to achieving an incredible goal, then focus your energy on achieving it!

And Then There Was The Weight Loss… And Gain
Ahhh… one of the reasons that I started writing this blog way back when was because I wanted to chronicle – in some form or another – the weight loss journey I was going on back in the early 2000s. After I graduated from college in May 2003, I was a big guy; probably logging in around 385 pounds. I don’t know exactly how my weight got to that point, but it did and I have horrible pictures to prove it. Then during the spring of 2004, my Father had some health trouble including a heart attack and stroke (neither of which impaired him at the time, thankfully) and a good friend of mine got married. In the wedding pictures, my big body takes up huge portions of each picture that I’m in. It was embarrassing. At the time, I knew that my Father’s health was deteriorating and that I wasn’t doing myself any favors socially by being that big of a guy so I resolved that my Father would see a healthier me before he died – and if there was a little bit more fun in my social life because of it, then that wasn’t a bad side effect. And then I ate less, worked out more, and lost a bunch of weight. To be exact, I lost 125 pounds in a year and reached 260 pounds – a weight that I hadn’t achieved since I was a wrestler in high school (and when I weighed that much while wrestling heavyweight in high school, I was pretty damn dominant). But the honeymoon didn’t last and I remember the exact day that the pendulum started swinging back in the other direction.

I was standing in my kitchen trying to figure out what to have for dinner. And some random flashes went through my mind of when I weighed 385 pounds and I would make a whole box of pasta, eat it with almost an entire jar of sauce, and drench it in different cheeses. During that flash, my taste buds went bonkers in my mouth because when I was 385 pounds, I thought that tasted good. And then something horrible reawakened in me and I made a whole box of pasta for dinner that night (with the sauce and the cheese and so on). As you might imagine, it made me sick. And getting sick allowed me to avoid the gym for a few days… which allowed me to continue eating some of the foods that I hadn’t had in over a year (candy, for example). And eating that stuff also got me sick… which, of course, led to missing more gym sessions. And the cycle back to gaining weight had begun. At some point when I crossed back over to 300 pounds, I sort of got that mental block in my head again that I couldn’t be healthy because it took too much time and effort (starting graduate school while working full-time didn’t help). Then I graduated from graduate school, got a new full-time job, my Father’s health deteriorated and I spent more time traveling to see him at the hospital, I spent more time building the website company on the side, I spent more time volunteering, etc, etc. And I gained back over 100 pounds. A few summers ago, my roommates and I had a weight loss contest that I should have won with no questions. I started the contest at 363.6 pounds and ended it weighing 314.6 pounds. Losing nearly 50 pounds didn’t win me the contest and over the course of the following months I gained most of that weight back. The lesson learned here? Well, there’s probably too many to list out and I’m sure each person has their own takeaway from this brief story, but the lesson that I learned is to not give up your successes so easily. Fight, damn it. And when you can’t stop the bleeding (metaphorically speaking), seek help. I didn’t have to regain those 125 pounds nearly a decade ago. There were people who would have helped me turn the tide back around in my favor, but I didn’t reach out and I regained much of that weight.

Writing More Often and More Thoroughly
This one is interesting because every few months/several times each year I hop onto this blog and write something like, “I’ve got a bunch of half-written entries that I’m working on for you, so stay tuned!” Meanwhile, if you are staying tuned, then you’re tuning into nothing. I mean how many entries have I even posted so far in 2013? This one makes 5, right? Pitiful. And yet, I find writing to be a very cathartic experience. It clears my mind of the craziness and hectic nature of my day-to-day working life and entrepreneurial efforts. Plus, I enjoy writing. I enjoy putting my fingers to work on this laptop and having something very tangible that is, I hope, of some higher level quality at the end of those efforts. In other words, writing allows the creative aspect of my personality to come out and take form. Although, when I write these blog entries I am keenly aware of trying to keep them short and sweet (not this one, obviously). Sure, sometimes you’ll read something that goes on and on (like this entry), but I would really enjoy writing more of these longer, extended entries so I can tell fuller, more thorough stories about my life, experiences, and thoughts on different issues. The lesson learned here is to make time for those things that soothe your mind and put your body at ease. For me, writing these entries accomplishes that goal and I should find more time to write fuller entries.

And there you go, folks. Those are some of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way and some of the things that I might have done differently. Thankfully, each of the setbacks or concerns that I’ve noted above were (and still are) easy to address in a head-on manner; or it is easy to overcome the unintended consequences of each of these items. There’s more to write about, of course, but if you read everything above, then you’ve just read the equivalent of an 8 page academic paper and sometimes you need to know when to call it quits and save some more for next time!

But Kickstarter is better than just feeling good about what you do with your money – you actually get something in return for your dollars.

The first campaign that I put some money towards was a music project. Believe it or not, there is a woman professional wrestler who is an accomplished country music artist. She’s not half bad, actually! Anyway, this woman was trying to make a second album with funding from Kickstarter and was asking for anyone to contribute $5, $10, $50, $100, and so on towards the costs to develop her album. After the word spread around the internet, she reached her funding goal and is now in the process of making the music. The dollar amount that you contribute to a campaign dictates what you’ll get in return. Personally, I only contribute at a level where I’m going to get something tangible. For this woman’s campaign, I contributed $50 (funded from my website company) which gets me both a physical copy of the new album plus the full MP3 version of the album, my name in the “thank you” section of the album, my CD autographed by the woman, and an invitation-only web concert. Sometimes the rewards are much more extravagant. For example, in this campaign if you donated $10,000, then you received all of these items, a 30-minute in-home concert, a hand-painted t-shirt from the singer, an executive producer listing for the album, and a personalized thank you video.

And each Kickstarter campaign is different. Seriously, check out the link above – I think you’ll enjoy what you find on there.

This entry, though, is about a new video game console that I saw on Kickstarter. Here, watch the video for yourself:

Did you watch the video? It’s a pretty cool concept, right? Some of you might be wondering, “Well, what’s the difference between this OUYA video game system and the Nintendo Wii or the Playstation 3 or something like that?” And that’s a good question. I’ve been doing some research on this OUYA concept and what these folks are trying to do and this is what I think the difference is between this console and the others.

It’s open.

When I say it’s open I mean that you can go in and hack it and it doesn’t void a warranty or become an illegal device or anything like you might imagine. In other words, people can go in and hack the core system’s operating protocols (I’m probably not using the right language) and it’s not a problem at all (assuming, of course, that the hacking doesn’t fry the system). The OUYA system is built on the same software infrastructure as the Droid cell phones out there – it’s an Android-based system. What this means is that anyone who can develop an “app” for a Droid cell phone or an app for a Droid tablet (for example, a NOOK) can have that app operationable on the OUYA system. This creates two immediate outcomes – one interesting and one alarming.

The interesting outcome is that since the console is built on the Android system, there are going to be thousands of apps and mobile games available for download on the first day that this thing is hooked up in your living room. The second, more alarming outcome is that I can’t imagine wanting to play any of the time-wasting games on my cell phone on the big screen of my television.

That second outcome is one of the issues that the OUYA development team is taking very seriously. They are talking to a variety of high-level gaming software companies to ensure that there are blockbuster-level games available for this system as soon as it hits the market. That’s going to be a huge task, but with only one week of starting their Kickstarter campaign these folks have already generated over $5.2 million from over 40,000 backers.

That’s a lot of money to make in a single week!

I admit that I’m not technical enough to know much more about how this thing is going to work, but I do know that if you Bing “OUYA” you’ll find a bunch of positive and negative press for the not-yet-created console. For my part, I like supporting these Kickstarter campaigns and I’ve supported a variety of independent video games on that website already. So I supported the OUYA campaign at the $99 level. This gets me the ability to reserve my username before the console goes live to market, a “Founder” emblem emblazoned next to my username forever, and an OUYA console plus one controller. That’s right – a brand new video game system (expected to be delivered some time in March 2013) for $99 (plus $20 for shipping).

You can’t even buy a used current generation console for $99!

If you’re interested in the OUYA or in at least learning more about it, check out their Kickstarter page. This is a very interesting concept and I’m glad to support it!

In other words, I did pretty well in 2010 so I had to pay extra money to the government for doing so well. To put it simply, free tax filing sounds good right about now. In total, I paid $3,564 to the Internal Revenue Service and another $374 to the great State of New Jersey.

"You can pay me now or you will pay me later." - Irwin R. Schyster

Oh, you might remember that I used a picture of former WWE wrestler Irwin R. Schyster in last year’s post. Well, I thought that the picture worked pretty well and was entertaining, so considering that I just uploaded a post that talked about WWE bringing WrestleMania to New Jersey, I figured that it would be great to bring back Mr. Schyster for this year’s tax news. And speaking of this year’s tax news…

I owe both the Internal Revenue Service and the State of New Jersey taxes again for 2011.

You can go back and read last year’s entry to find out all of the different places where I draw income from (including advertising revenues related to this blog). You can also go back and read last year’s entry to find out some of the different side jobs that I perform each year (adjunct teaching, for example). However, I want to reiterate a point that I made last year: generally speaking, I want to pay these taxes.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to find ways to not pay the government according to the tax laws on the books. Unless you’ve got big-time scratch (and I do not), then it makes no sense to go out of your way to hide income or gains from the government. They’ll find out and they’ll nail you for it – so pay your damn taxes. The reason why I’m generally okay with paying these extra taxes is because I made a good amount of money last year.

I mean it’s simple enough, right? You make more money than you pay taxes on so you have to pay taxes on that excess income. Generally speaking, what’s the problem with that? Sure, we can get into a discussion about whether or not I should be taxed at the rate that I’m currently taxed at (I would suggest that I should be taxed at a lower rate). And yes, we can get into a discussion about whether the government uses my tax dollars according to my will or in a manner that I find efficient (the answer is “no” for both of those items), but that’s not the point of this entry. The point is that you should all want to pay more in taxes because if you have to pay more in taxes, then you must have earned more in income during the previous year. Let me repeat that:

The more taxes you pay, the more money you earned.

Keywords: “more,” “money,” and “earned.”

While I think that it sucks and I might be annoyed that I have to send a check to the Internal Revenue Service for some $3,200+ and to the State of New Jersey for some $450+, I’m glad that I worked hard enough and earned enough money to increase my tax liability. Although I do have a bone to pick with the IRS over one aspect of my taxes (the student loan interest deduction), but I’ll get to that in an entry to be posted in the next few days). Also, this year I was better prepared for a higher tax liability because of being so shocked that I owed money last year. So I’m prepared to pay the government this year with very little impact on my regular cash flow.

And that’s a good thing… because nobody wants to open their door and find Irwin R. Schyster waiting on their doorstep looking for a check. No thanks!

Here is the ad that was on my bank's site. Notice the rate has fallen to 1.76% from 2.01%.

Like most people, I don’t like to mess with my day-to-day banking or investment accounts so I took some time to mull over whether I should bother with the high yield account or just leave well enough alone. Though it took me a few days, I finally decided to go over to my local branch of Central Jersey Bank and talk to them about the high yield checking account option.

There’s no great “POW!” moment to end this portion of the entry, so be forewarned. I went over to the branch and the woman who assisted me was excellent and showed me how my usage qualified for the high yield checking account. We talked about the different checking account options and I opted to go with this account. So now my checking account is earning 1.76% (the rate went down a few days ago and will probably continue to go down each month – hey, I know it’s a promotion, but it’s a good one).

While I was talking to the woman at the bank, I thought I might open up a savings account, too. I haven’t had a savings account at a brick-and-mortar bank in a long time – probably dating back to when I was in my first or second year of college (which, terrifyingly enough, was over a decade ago). For a long time now I’ve had a savings account at ING Direct and I’ve been very happy with its performance. Of course, the initial interest rate that I was receiving over at ING Direct was something like 4.50% and that’s dropped down to 0.90%, but I understand that the drop was more a function of a poor financial market than factors inside ING Direct (or any other bank for that matter). Anyway, I wanted to open up a savings account and two issues stopped me dead in my tracks.

I wound up staying with ING Direct

A $3 fee for not keeping at least $1,000 in a 0.30% savings account? Yeah right! Give me a break.

Instead of dealing with that hot mess, I decided to just stick with my ING Direct account as my only savings account. I would liked to diversify and have a second savings account, but silly restrictions like the one noted above are not something that I have the time or the inclination to worry about. With respect to savings accounts, though, I’m thinking about looking into Ally Bank since they’re offering a similar rate to ING Direct (0.85%).

This process did get me thinking, though. In particular, I started thinking more about the checking account that I use for Usable Web Solutions, LLC. I keep most of the funds for my small website business in Sovereign Bank, but I really haven’t been thrilled with their service since they were acquired by Santander a few years ago. Certain things have become a hassle that shouldn’t be a hassle. For example, they rebranded and changed their debit cards and so they sent me a new one to use. Like any new debit card, I had to activate it over the phone. The problem was that the phone activation system forced me (automatically for some reason) to an operator for final activation. Then this woman on the activation line may have asked me 50 questions to get this stupid card (which I didn’t want, request, or need) activated.

I'm not sold on Santander's customer service

And then TD Bank came in and crapped all over Commerce Bank’s customer-friendly reputation, but that’s another story.

In any event, this entire process has me thinking about some of my other banking and investment accounts. I’ve scheduled a meeting with my company’s 401k agent to talk to her about my asset allocation in my 401k account. For some reason, I’ve got a gut feeling that now is the time to invest heavily in aggressive, struggling funds. Yeah, they’re probably going to go down again, but I think they’re going to come roaring back in the next 2 – 3 years. I guess we’ll see, but I want to meet with the agent to be sure that my feeling is reflected adequately in my asset allocation.

Ahhh... the good old days!

Since the only thing keeping me hanging on to this credit card is the Worldpoints feature, I’ve been researching other “cash back” credit cards and all of the reviews point me towards the Freedom Chase card. Sure, the interest rate is a bit high and variable (both unacceptable for someone who isn’t a credit risk at all), but I don’t carry a balance anyway so I wouldn’t be paying the interest. Plus, there are a variety of ways to double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple (that’s “multiply times five,” folks) the amount of points that you get for certain purchases with the Freedom Chase card.

So I’ve been thinking about possibly getting that card. And I’ve also been looking into the Barnes & Noble MasterCard because, you know, I’m a Barnes & Noble fan. They’re big draw is that for everyone 2,500 points you earn (i.e. every $2,500 you spend on the credit card), you get a free $25 Barnes & Noble gift card sent to you. You also get 5% off everything at their store. There are some months where I spend more than $2,500 on my credit card, so getting that monthly gift card would be nice. But then again, it would also be nice to build a whole bunch of points with Freedom Chase and get cash back instead of a gift card.

Nothing wrong with one of these big, massive banks sending me a check every once in a while, you know?

Anyway, what about the rest of you? Is anyone else out there reassessing where they put their money and which financial products they use during this cloudy economic climate?

Alright, so WWE alumnus Irwin R. Schyster isn't actually getting my money, but you get the point!

According to the tax software, I owe the great State of New Jersey $525 while I owe the IRS some $3,686. In total, I owe $4,211 in additional taxes for last year. Sure, I have a few more reviews to make on the various tax forms (my taxes are really complicated – see the next paragraph), but I don’t think that these numbers are changing too much.

The reason why my taxes are increasingly complicated is because of all of the stuff that I “do.” In fact, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you know that I bitch every once in a while about being too busy. Well, that hectic schedule carries over a similar craziness when it comes time to do my taxes. You see, I get some W-2 forms (my day job and teaching at the local college), a bunch of 1099-MISC forms (teaching at the online college, a few for certain types of income earned from Usable Web Solutions, etc), a 1098-T form for the classes that I was able to take for free last year at the local college, two different student loan interest deduction forms (one from the USDOE and one from NJHESAA), a Schedule C for my website company, a Schedule C for the other small business that I started for the online teaching and grant writing, a 1099-B for proceeds from stock sales, etc, etc. It gets ridiculous after a while.

If I didn’t have such a good handle on all of this stuff (I think), then I’d seriously consider getting myself an accountant to do this work for me. But I think I have a good grasp on what’s going on with my funds, so I’m confident in this return. But to get back to the point…

I already pay my taxes. Just like the rest of the working world, my company deducts my tax obligation through my paycheck and – just like the rest of the working world – I get sick at how much money gets taken out of my paycheck for taxes each pay period. However, I’m fine with paying an additional $4,211 in taxes for last year. Why? It’s simple, really.

I made a good amount of money last year.

Look, folks – I’m not writing this entry to brag or toot my own horn or anything because I’m not bringing in the big bucks by any means. However, think about what you’ve read on this blog for the last year or two: I work at a day job, I’m an Adjunct Professor at the local college, I’m an online instructor at a very well-known online college, I’ve owned a successful and profitable small business for 5 years, and I contract for some low-level consulting and grant writing jobs for local nonprofit organizations. I work like a madman! And, obviously, one of the end results of that type of work schedule should be an increase in a guy’s annual income and, thankfully, that’s how it worked out for me last year.

I WANT To Pay These Taxes
But the reason why I wanted to share the fact that I’m paying a lot of taxes for last year’s income is because I want to pay these taxes. That’s right – I want this additional tax liability which is over and above the taxes that I already paid last year. Why do I want this increased liability? Because when you pay more in taxes, it means that you’re making more money and everyone should want to increase their annual income. Of course, most folks won’t have a convoluted tax return like I have where certain revenue streams deduct federal income taxes and others don’t, but just remember the lesson here: the more money you make, the more money you’re going to owe.

It’s okay to owe a few tax dollars at the end of the year – it means that your income is going in the right direction. Good luck on your tax returns this year, everyone!

Happy Five Year Anniversary!

And, honestly, that strategy pretty much worked.

However, what I learned as I went along was that my original intention of focusing on websites for start-up businesses was a losing proposition. The truth is that many local start-up businesses do not (and will not) generate any revenue from their website. And as we saw over the last few years with the tough economy, when times are tough companies begin to cut costs. So, if you’re a small business owner and you have to decide what gets cut in your budget – do you opt for cutting your website services or for cutting your salary?

I think we all know how that usually ends up…

Over the last few years, I’ve had a surprisingly large number of clients simply stop paying me for contracted services (i.e. deadbeats). In fact, altogether I’ve had 36 contracted clients since I opened up Usable Web Solutions, LLC. Actually, that’s not a bad amount of clients to sign up over a five year period considering that this website company is my side gig after my day job, teaching at the local university, and teaching at the online college. But to get back to the deadbeat clients – of the 36 contracts I signed in the last five years, 12 of my clients turned out to be deadbeats.

It’s an astonishing number when you think about it. A full third of my clients either just stopped paying, were horrible clients and screwed me out of contracted revenue, or just randomly disappeared. It’s outrageous. But, like I said above, I learned as I went along and what I learned was interesting on its face, but not totally surprising.

When I was working with outside clients, the chances of me getting screwed over were 1 in 2. However, when I was working with websites that I had a direct stake in, the chances of me getting screwed over were 0%. Some of you may ask, “what does it mean that you had a direct stake in the website?” Good question. As it turns out, of the 36 contracts that I signed over the last five years, 10 of them were with myself! That’s right – my best client looks at me in the mirror every morning.

Websites that fall within the boundaries of me having a stake in them include the one that you’re reading right now – JerseySmarts.com. In addition, I own 3 professional wrestling websites, 2 fraternity websites, 2 websites that are nothing more than domains right now, the actual Usable Web Solutions, LLC website, and a photo hosting website for my Mother’s eBay sales. Over the course of the last five years I’ve actually owned more than these 10 websites, but I’ve been shedding the websites that don’t turn a profit.

About two years ago, it became glaringly apparent that the majority of Usable Web Solution, LLC’s revenue was earned via advertising on the websites that I had a direct stake in. Further, it became apparent that with at least half of my outside clients screwing me over, chances were that I was wasting my time with them. So I began doing what any good businessman would do – I began shedding the outside clients and increasing my investment in the revenue generating websites.

From my perspective, this change in strategy from focusing on local nonprofits and start-up businesses to focusing on websites that I have a direct stake in paid off. For example, in its first three years of operations, Usable Web Solutions, LLC was losing money each year. Sure, it wasn’t losing huge sums of money, but it was losing money nonetheless. However, in the last two years the company has lost much less money. Now, some folks will read that and say that it’s still losing money and that’s true. But there’s no comparison between losing, say, $1,000 during one of the first three years of operations and losing, say, $20 during one of the last two years of operations.

Besides, the truth is that these losses are simply based on income versus expenses. Anyone who works in accounting could look at my books and know that, in terms of real dollars, Usable Web Solutions, LLC has been generating revenue since I started shedding the deadbeats. It’s been great, actually.

And that’s about as succinct a wrap up that I can provide after five years as a small business owner! I suspect that during the next five years I’ll continue this trend of shedding third party clients (I still have some) and focusing more on the websites that I have a direct stake in because – at the end of the day – it makes smart business sense.

After spending a few vacations in a row doing this type of stuff, it begins to completely wear a person out.

But I’m not complaining. Nope. Instead, I’m glad because – just like with my student loans – I can now begin to see some light at the end of this tunnel of constantly working around the clock. What does that mean? Well, let me explain!

I’ve chronicled on this blog many times in the past few months that I’ve been getting rid of some website clients for a variety of reasons. The primary reason that I’m spinning clients off is due to the misunderstanding that many of my [former] clients had about what my duties were as a webmaster (i.e. I’m not the guy to call when your computer has a virus) as well as my rates being so low that I wasn’t turning a large enough profit to keep these clients in my portfolio. Was I turning a profit with these clients? More or less. But it certainly wasn’t akin to what my time is worth in the market. So by clearing out some of these clients, I’m going to open up some more free time in my schedule.

On top of that, I began this public relations certificate program at the local college last year. Why did I start the program, you ask? Well, I hate loose ends and I attended this college as a graduate student for one semester before leaving to go to Rutgers University to pursue a different Masters Degree. In the mean time, during that one semester at the local college I completed one course for three credits. Technically, I’ve had those three credits outstanding and just hanging around at the local college for seven years – and that has always annoyed me. To remedy that annoyance, I started a certificate program during the fall semester of 2009. The program calls for 12 credits in order to receive the certificate and I now have (including those three credits from 2003) nine credits completed in the program. I’m currently taking an independent study (in an awesome topic, by the way) that will be completed by December 15th of this year. Once the independent study is completed and [successfully] graded, I will be a certified public relations specialist. And I won’t have those three credits hanging around or have to worry about studying and researching like a graduate student any more, either. More free time and a free public relations specialist certificate? Works for me!

My other big commitment that will be alleviated before Christmas is my face-to-face teaching obligations at the local college. Currently, I’m teaching one face-to-face course twice each week in the morning. This is the first time that I’m teaching in the morning and it definitely has been challenging on my personal and professional schedules. Once this class ends, though, I’m not scheduled to teach another face-to-face class until next September. In other words, my time commitment at a college campus that is about 15 – 20 minutes from my home will dramatically decrease until next fall. Not bad!

As for the online teaching gig, all of the courses that I’m currently mentoring will be over in the middle of December. To date, I haven’t been scheduled to teach any new classes in December or January, but that’s okay. There is an ebb and a flow to the demand for the niche courses that I teach for this online university and I expect that the demand will pick up again in the early spring. Although you never know with this online college – sometimes they assign a course out of the blue. However, right now it looks like that obligation on my time will be easing up in the middle of December.

Thinking a little bit longer term, some of you may know that while I serve as the Treasurer of the fraternity Foundation, I am also leading our strategic planning process. We are scheduled to complete that process by the first weekend of February 2011. Once that process is complete, a great deal of my time that I spend in my mini-home office will be opened up again for me to spend on my personal interests or… nothing at all!

So when you read entries like this on JerseySmarts.com, don’t think that I’m bitching. In fact, I lay out these types of entries because this is still a personal blog and it helps me to organize my thoughts a little bit. So thanks for reading through my thought organization process!

In addition, I’ve been reading through some of the books that are taking up space on my bookshelf and, obviously, you should look for a few book reviews coming in the next few days/weeks. And hey, at least one of these reviews is for a book sent to me from a professional wrestler’s publishing company so I could offer some commentary on the piece. Pretty cool, huh? Here are some other things that I’m working on that may not receive their own entry on JerseySmarts.com:

• Sigma Pi Educational Foundation: I make no secret out of the fact that I donate my time, talent, and whatever treasure I can scrounge up to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation. With respect to that “talent” portion of my contributions, since August I’ve been heading up the Foundation’s strategic plan study group. This duty has allowed me to work closely with some of my fellow Trustees as well as some volunteers – all of whom are looking for a better, stronger way forward for the Foundation and Fraternity alike. Earlier this week we held the last focus group conference call which capped a two and a half week period of these types of calls – many of which I was on for over an hour. I’ve compiled a preliminary, raw data report and sent it out for the study group’s review. Later this week we’re going to have another conference call and then I’m going to spend some time compiling a final report to the entire Board of Trustees. However, the work isn’t over yet. In a few weeks I’ll be heading to Nashville, Tennessee to present our research findings and then to lead the larger strategic planning process with the entire Board of Trustees. This process will be capped off during the December/January time frame and then, finally, I can take a breather on this stuff! By the way, click here if you want to make a small, 100% tax-deductible donation to support the Foundation’s scholarships.
• Preparing for a Family Night: Over the last few weeks, I worked with my brothers and future sister-in-law to plan for a family night and dinner for my Mother’s recent birthday. We had the family night and dinner last night and it was a lot of fun, I think. In fact, one of the best things to come out of last night was a family discussion about reducing our excess spending on Christmas this year because, frankly, we’re all working towards specific financial goals that require a dedicated planning effort on our parts. It was a great conversation and a great conclusion, I think. Plus, spending the night with the family for dinner to celebrate my Mother’s birthday was a great time!
• Financial Planning Roadblock, Courtesy of NJHESAA: I’m not sure yet, but I might spin this little blip off into its own entry to mimic an entry that I wrote both one month ago and many months ago. The long and short of it is that I sent a $1,000 payment to NJHESAA on Monday, October 18th. The check was finally posted to my account on Thursday, October 28th. But that’s not what has me completely frustrated and aggravated with this anti-customer service organization. What bothers me is that I sent a $4,300 check to NJHESAA on Tuesday, October 19th and here we are on Saturday, October 30th and the check hasn’t been posted to my account yet. What the Hell is NJHESAA waiting for to post my damn check?! This isn’t hard, NJHESAA – I know you have the check now post the damn thing to my account for goodness’ sake. I can’t wait to be done with this miserable, horrible organization. NJHESAA could learn a thing or two from the United States Department of Education about customer service and making the student loan repayment process easier for the borrower. Because, at this point, NJHESAA’s payment processing system is borderline ineffective which tells me that there has to be some incompetent people working there. What else could bring on a nearly two week delay?!
• Financial Projections and Forecasting Stunted: As you might imagine, because of NJHESAA’s inability to process a check with any semblance of efficiency, my financial projections and forecasting has been stunted for the last few weeks. For a guy who checks each of his accounts both in the morning and at night (and sometimes in the middle of the day), waiting for these bozos to post this check is torture. I’ve been adjusting my projection models by $4,300 every time that I go in there and make a move. It’s annoying. I have a lot of financial goals that I expect myself to achieve in the coming weeks, months, and years and with my ability to precisely project when my dollars will be posted to various accounts, it makes planning for the immediate future very difficult.
• Bizarre Indian Summer: I’m not going to spin this out into its own entry because it’s short, but if you live in New Jersey then you know that we had this weird Indian summer hit us in the last week or so. Before the mini-heat wave hit, I went out and purchased a radiator for my bedroom and it’s awesome! It actually warms up the entire second floor of the townhouse – can’t complain about that at all!
• Beginning to Complete Coursework: Some of you may remember that I’m actually enrolled in an independent study course at the local college where I teach. Successfully completing this independent study will give me a Public Relations Specialist certificate. Not too bad, huh? I’ve read through the material for the course and, once the final strategic plan report is completed for the Foundation (see above), I’m going to aggressively complete the required coursework for the independent study. I’ve decided that this is going to be the last course that I take for a while since it will complete the certificate program. Also, I don’t want to go back for more education until my life calms down just a little bit (which I think is coming within the next two years, thankfully).
• Grading, Grading, and More Grading: It’s midterm season at the college where I’m an Adjunct Professor so you know what that means – grading time! But it’s not only grading time for the class that I teach in the face-to-face setting. It’s also grading time for the classes that I teach for the online college. I’m thinking of asking the online college to reduce the number of classes that they assign to me – they’re giving me two or three each month and it is so incredibly time consuming that it’s painful sometimes…
• Some Consistency at the Local Gym: Hey – I’ve been going to the local college gym at least once each weekend for the last three weeks. Not bad, right? And now you know why I’ve been able to read so much in the last few weeks – I’ve been on the treadmill. I’ll be heading to the gym tomorrow morning before the trick-or-treaters start knocking on my door. While my results at the gym haven’t been overly impressive (I’m not necessarily losing a bunch of weight – a pound here and there maybe), I am pretty pleased that I’ve been able to make it there one day each weekend during a very busy, crazy time for me.
• Unending Projects at the Office: Hovering above all of the stuff written above is the fact that I have a pretty busy, increasingly stressful day job. Part of that stress comes from the person that manages my department and her mood swings, part of that stress comes from a changing workplace that expects the existing employees to transition to a new organizational structure without officially telling us what that structure will look like (or interviewing us for new positions), and part of that stress comes from the daily grind stuff that needs to be completed day in and day out that is made harder by the fact that my particular department is well-understaffed and thus we all have to do four/five different jobs each. And when you add in the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of the communication work for the organization – you can see how the stress builds up. Very annoying and, frankly, until this day-to-day stress goes away (which better happen soon), I think some of the other goals I have for my health and finances are going to be hard to achieve.
• Changing the Face of Usable Web Solutions, LLC: Thankfully, after months of trying, I’ve successfully spun off one of my last remaining problem clients. Sure, the client screwed me on the way out the door, but I’m so excited that this client is gone that I don’t even care any more about the screw job. Whatever. Removing this client effectively removes more stress from my life and, ultimately, makes Usable Web Solutions, LLC a stronger, better organization. And with that, I’m beginning to change the nature of this small business. In the future, I’m going to focus on websites that are owned by the company and bring in advertising revenue because, honestly, that’s where the money is in this online business stuff. Going out there to find independent clients is not the way to find success in the website world.
• Barnes & Noble’s New NookColor: Here’s a quick item for both the “Watch What You Say to Customers” and “Buyer Beware” files. For some awful reason I’ve been researching e-readers lately. I don’t know why – I love reading an actual book and I really don’t like the setup or arrangement of the e-readers that are on the market. But still, I began researching them and decided that I wanted to buy a Barnes & Noble Nook. However, something told me to wait. I wasn’t sure what it was that told me to wait, but I think it had something to do with the good voice in my head constantly shouting that I had dozens and dozens of physical books in my home that I haven’t even read yet! So, this buyer was wary of the products on the market and didn’t buy. Then, lo and behold, the NookColor is introduced and now I want to buy that thing as soon as possible (probably early next year once the inevitable glitches have been worked out). But the “Watch What You Say to Customers” file comes into play here because, just days before the NookColor was released I asked the guy at the local Barnes & Noble whether or not a new model was coming out and he swore up and down to me that, “We’re not Apple – we don’t have a new version of the product each year.” Oh yeah? Really? Hmmm…

There are a few different items that I’ve been working on that I didn’t think would find full entries on JerseySmarts.com. However, this stuff may be of some importance to a few of you so I hope that you enjoyed reading!

For example, I’m sure that not many people who are first time visitors to the website realize how big of a story I am telling with my student loan repayment. There are a lot of ways to feature that more prominently on JerseySmarts.com and I have a few good ideas on how to do make it all happen. Also, since I do own and operate some other websites, I thought that I might take the opportunity that a redesign affords and incorporate some content and elements from those websites into this one, too.

What do you like to see when you come to a blog like this one? Are there any design features that, when you look at them, make you fall in love with a particular website? Let me know!